


splitting threads of thunder over me

by sibley (ferns)



Category: Justice League of America's Vibe (Comics), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Backstory, Canonical Child Abuse, Child Abuse, Earth-19, Earth-19 Politics, F/M, Father-Daughter Relationship, Implied/Referenced Sex, Implied/Referenced Torture, Other, Rebellion, Worldbuilding, cindy-centric, of a kind - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-03
Updated: 2018-01-03
Packaged: 2019-02-27 17:00:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,729
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13252626
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ferns/pseuds/sibley
Summary: Cynthia was born to be a tool for her mother, born to be a princess, and born to be a weapon. She is none of those things.





	splitting threads of thunder over me

**Author's Note:**

> If DCTV won't give me Cindy's backstory, I'll do it my fucking self.
> 
> This work contains some mild references to transphobia, referenced consensual sexual content, referenced child abuse, referenced torture, brainwashing, violence, and death.

Cynthia was born to be a tool.

Neither of her parents will let her forget it, although her father is, as always, kinder about it. He uses it to encourage her, to tell her she’s more than what she was born to be and that together they’ll prove that to everyone. He doesn’t care about the consequences of telling her that if she wants, she can be anything in the world, even if it’s not what she was born for. Her mother’s reminders are used to put her in her place. To make her feel worthless.

It’s not something she can deny. She was born to be a tool for her mother, born to be a piece of a weapon, a cog in a machine. Something to siphon energy from. When the day comes, she knows she’ll fight it and run and live up to her nickname, the one they call her based off her habit of disappearing at random. They think it’s out of earshot of her, that she can’t hear them saying it, because her mother’s servants have never learned that just because something is gone it doesn’t mean that it can’t still listen in.

Her father, when he hears the nickname, tells Cynthia to wear it with pride.  _ A lot of people would give anything to be as much of a phantom as you, _ he says, like he doesn’t know that she learned it from his disappearing acts with her in tow whenever her mother would get particularly angry at something. They hide together when she is angry, her squished up between his knees with her nose buried in his chest and his arms wrapped around her as he smooths down her choppy dark curls.

When the danger has passed, her father brings her candy, always. She eats it the next time they are hiding together, sharing it with him while her mother and his wife screams down the halls. Sometimes Cynthia feels bad for the servants who suffer in her place, until she remembers how they would turn up their noses at the accent she got from her father and her dark skin and her habit of wrestling with her father in the mud outside the Steel Spire. She’s not supposed to do or have any of those things. She doesn’t understand why.

Her father tells her that it’s because they’ve been around her mother so long that they’ve been poisoned by her even if she doesn’t really have her talons in their brains. That they’ve been so brainwashed by being around her that they see her as the epitome of beauty and behavior.

Cynthia can’t imagine that. Her mother is beautiful in some way, yes, but it’s a horrific kind of beauty like a bloody porcelain doll. She’s so artificial and fake in everything she does that it’s a wonder anybody in Piradell or outside of it thinks she’s anything but. How can they love her when she hurts them? She asks her father that, once, while they’re curled together in hiding and listening to her mother’s furious shouts as they grow fainter. Cynthia stopped loving her when she hurt her.

Her father sighs and cups her face and presses their foreheads together and tells her that sometimes love and pain get all mixed up and it’s hard to tell one from the other. Cynthia frowns and reaches out to touch the scars on her father’s neck gently. She doesn’t know if she understands yet. “But Mother doesn’t love us, Daddy.”

“No,” he sighs, squeezing her again, tighter this time, “I don’t think she does.”

Cynthia was born to be a tool. She can’t change that. But she can change the kind of tool that she is.

She sharpens her edges and trains herself not to let her mother’s influence in and becomes something stronger than she ever thought she could be, something that’s more dangerous than anything else on Earth-19 and twice as startling. At the training facility for the Collectors, where she goes after she almost kills a visiting diplomat, they don’t know she’s the crown princess. They know her father is on the council but they don’t actually know which one he is or that he’s their king.

Cynthia gets in trouble on her first day at the facility for punching another girl in the nose when she asked if Cynthia was  _ sure  _ she was in the right locker room, and it only sets the trend for the rest of her time there. She has a few friends, of course, though only one of them is close. Fellow trainee Mari McCabe is the closest person in the world to being her best friend. They met when Cynthia was eating lunch in the corner and glaring at the other freshmen and Mari walked over and slammed her plate down and announced that they were roommates and that she hoped Cynthia could come to think of her as a sister.

Cynthia, who had never had anybody try to be her friend before, and  _ definitely  _ not anybody who she could consider calling a sister, had decided to protect Mari with her life from that moment onward. Mari knew she was the princess, the maybe future queen of their world, and didn’t care. They shared rebellious whispers in their room together about how much they disagreed with the queen, although Cynthia always went first. Mari had never really gotten over the paranoia that Cynthia would sell her out for being a rebel.

There are always rumors swirling around the training facilities about traitors to the crown, but suspicion never falls on her or on Mari. Cynthia suspects that it has something to do with her father watching out for her as well as he can. Always the protective one. A young man named David Hyde is almost arrested for being a rebellion leader, but when Cynthia points them in a different direction he’s left alone. 

He hangs around with her and Mari after that, and seems to like that they’re two of a handful of people at this particular facility who respect his boundaries. Cynthia passes word along to her father, and the next night when he returns to his room his sheets are made of something other than cotton. Having connections to higher-ups is good, sometimes. David, who finally doesn’t have to sleep on the floor to get away from the texture of the cotton, certainly seems to think so.

Throughout it all, though, she can’t shake the feeling that her mother is watching. Maybe it’s because of the wartime propaganda posters that are up on the walls in some of the classrooms-they’re not just learning fighting here. The posters remind her of a war she wasn’t alive to see, of the power vacuum that followed it, and of her mother’s subsequent rise to power. It hurts her to see them, but she doesn’t dare tear them down. Cynthia convinces herself that they’re the real reason for the feeling. The Collecting program  _ is  _ government-run despite basically being a bounty hunting system, but her mother dislikes the government, probably because of the hand her husband has in it.

When she graduates, finally, she’s assigned a partner. They all are. Mari and a nice girl named Zatanna get assigned to each other, which Cynthia teases Mari about since she’s been watching Mari make heart eyes at Zatanna since the moment she first laid eyes on her. David and a loner girl named Hila are assigned to each other, to their mutual resignation.

Cynthia doesn’t look at who she’s been assigned, not at first, eyes trained on her codename and on her supervisor. It’s not a surprise that she’s working under her father, but it  _ is  _ a relief. But the codename… Something hot and ugly twists inside of her. The palace nickname she thought she’d escaped. Was this her father’s doing?

“Hey!” Someone says brightly over her shoulder, and Cynthia swallows past the lump in her throat as she turns to look at the beaming person next to her. “Cynthia-sorry, it’s Ghost now, right? I’m your new partner. I don’t think we’ve ever spoken.” They hold out their hand. “Nice to meet you, I’m… Well, that board says I’m now ‘Mystek’, but you can call me Seong, or Barclay, or Jennifer. But not Jenny.”

Cynthia can’t resist smiling a little. They sound charming. “Don’t call me Ghost.”

“Alright,” Barclay says with a grin. Cynthia can’t help but notice the rosy tint to their cheeks and the way that their dark brown eyes almost glow with warmth. Something in her stomach makes her toes curl. “You wanna go get some hot chocolate and talk powers?”

It’s always awkward when two people assigned to each other didn’t gel. The council prided themselves on assigning the perfect pairs, but they messed up often. Sometimes, they struck gold, like when they partnered up Ted and Michael, but most of the time the people they paired together disliked each other immensely. Currently, Cynthia could hear about five different arguments, the loudest one being between the boys next to the two of them. Cynthia knew their names-Ray and Billy-but she didn’t actually know anything else about them.

Maybe her partnership with Barclay would work out, though. Maybe. If they were lucky. 

Over hot chocolate and apple cider in Barclay’s room, which they-he or she, it doesn’t matter which, Cynthia reminds herself-share with a guy named Ben Turner, they talk about themselves and about their powers. Barclay’s delighted to find out about Cynthia’s abilities, admitting that she can manipulate energy on a subatomic level. Cynthia sees now why they’re a good match for each other. Similar powers. And similar morals.

Barclay tells her that he’s from New York, which surprises Cynthia a little. There’s a large concentration of metahumans that come from the badlands out by what’s left of New York, but most of them die young or disappear instead of getting snatched up by the Collecting council. Cynthia never understood why. The council gets a worse reputation than it deserves. Her father is the bravest and the best person she knows, her idol, the person who kept her alive throughout her childhood by protecting her from her mother, and he’s one of the heads of it.

When Cynthia tells Barclay that she grew up in the Steel Spire, under the watchful eye of the queen of their world, Barclay does something Cynthia doesn’t except-she gasps and clasps a hand over her mouth, his eyes softening. “That must have been so hard for you,” he murmurs. Cynthia wonders if it’d be possible for her to drown in the darkness of somebody else’s eyes and then tells herself to shut up and get her head in the game. “I can’t even imagine.”

“Imagine what?” Cynthia blinks slowly at her new partner. “I was a spoiled rich kid. Nothing more. I’ll be queen one day, even if I don’t want to be.”

Barclay doesn’t have to know it’s a lie.

Barclay leans forward a little, gripping her cup of hot chocolate tighter. Cynthia automatically clutches her own mug, which has a little logo that says  _ Circuit Shack _ on it and is full of the best apple cider she’s ever had, tighter in return. Barclay lowers his voice down to a whisper. “In the badlands, they have stories about the raptors that the queen has made. The people she’s killed with her bare hands or with her Hound.” Barclay swallows. “Is… Is the Hound even real?”

“I don’t like to think about him,” Cynthia admits with a rush of shame. It feels weird to say all these things out loud to someone who isn’t her father. But she has to trust Barclay in the field with her life, doesn’t she? He has to know this about her. It’ll keep them both safe in the long run, right? That’s why the system is in place. “But-yes, he’s real. And deadly.”

Barclay closes her eyes and shakes his head. “I’m sorry you had to go through that.”

Cynthia looks away. She wonders how Barclay will respond when she meets Cynthia’s father. “...It was fine. I had my Dad."

“He’s a Collector on the council, right?” Barclay sounds eager.

“The one we were assigned to, yeah.” Cynthia fiddles with the sleeve of her jacket. “He’s great.”

She doesn’t say that he’s probably the only reason Cynthia is still alive. The only one who let her quietly become the princess instead of the prince underneath her mother’s nose until it was too late for her mother to stop it. The one who held her in the aftermath of what had happened when she was fourteen, the incident (it makes her stomach hurt to call it that) that revealed her powers to the rest of the Spire and got her sent to the Collector’s program in the first place.

Cynthia was born to be a tool, but Barclay makes her feel like she can be something more than that.

She should’ve known better than to fall in love with her partner.

It’s not the serious level of some of the others in the program. It’s not like that for the the two of them. They love and trust each other, and Cynthia wouldn’t have anybody else at her side while facing down a particularly nasty breacher, but it’s different than what Mari and Zatanna have and what their tentative exploration of each other is. There’s no illusions between the two of them about marriage or a life outside of being a Collector. They share their apartment out of necessity, though when Barclay comes into Cindy’s room at night it’s definitely  _ not. _

Zatanna and Mari are probably going to be married one day. It’s not unheard of for Collectors, of course. Uncommon but not anything special. Barclay and Cynthia don’t want or need that from each other. What they have is good. It’s the kind of love that lets them trust each other unconditionally when they need to, the kind that lets them share Cynthia’s bed, sometimes, when they’re sure they’re not going to be called away to another mission any time soon.

Cynthia tells Mari and David as much as she can about Barclay without it being awkward, and Mari tells her about Zatanna, and they look at David expectantly and he just sighs and shakes his head because while yes, he and Hila are friends who do care for each other and love each other, it’s not that kind of love. David wants kids one day, though, so he’s still hopeful.

Barclay becomes Cynthia’s whole world. She introduces her father to him, and he tries to pull the overprotective dad thing until Cynthia scolds him and then he just chases Barclay around for a few hours. He tells her, later, that he really likes him, and he knew he made a good choice when he assigned them to each other despite the fact that the two of them weren’t friends and didn’t even really know each other at all before they were assigned to be partners.

Cynthia was born to be a tool, and maybe if she had sculpted herself to be a better one it would have been easier to take Barclay’s loss.

She was the one to bring the body back, fruitlessly pleading with the doctors to keep her best friend in the whole world alive even though she knew full well that the wounds had been fatal. But they  _ couldn’t  _ have been fatal, Cynthia knew Barclay was too strong for that, too resilient.

Cynthia thought about pulling her partner free from the tiny box Kadabra had stuffed her inside, how wild his eyes had been behind her metal mask. How he’d had a deathgrip on her hands, how ragged his breathing had been. Cynthia thought about the first time Barclay had confessed to her, slightly tipsy and laughing at herself, that he was horribly claustrophobic and had been ever since an incident with herself and another metahuman when she was younger.

Thought about how loud the gunshots had been in Cynthia’s ears. How Barclay had spat blood into her lap and hadn’t even screamed. Just let out a small, rasping sigh. Like she was resigned to his own death. About how her last words, whispered in Cynthia’s ear as she breached them both away in an attempt to get her partner to the medical wing of the main headquarters, had been  _ “Better dead free.” _

Cynthia, Mari, Zatanna, David, and an old woman who must have been Barclay’s grandmother were the only ones at the funeral. Nobody spoke outside of Zatanna and Mari’s hushed whispers. Cynthia didn’t speak to Barclay’s grandmother outside of introducing herself at the start of the funeral. All she knew about the woman was that her name was Sang-mi and she was the only person left alive out of Barclay’s family now that her grandchild was gone.

The smell of smoke stings her nose and burns at her eyes. Metahuman bodies are burnt unless there’s an outside reason for it not to happen. Practically, it’s because they don’t want experimentation happening on meta corpses, and it makes it easier for people’s powers to not radiate the Earth after they’re dead. Or something. Cynthia never was a good history student. But the smoke is a good reason for her to be crying, if anybody asks, so she’ll bear it.

Cynthia had been the one to pick out the clothes Barclay was wearing during the funeral and subsequent surrendering of the body to the proper authorities. It was only fair that she wear a clean version of his uniform, the black and gold and silver covering his closed eyes. Cynthia had made sure that the people in charge of dressing her had  _ known  _ to put Barclay in a binder-purple, since that was one of his favorite colors. She hadn’t stayed to watch the entire disappearance of the coffin into flames. Hadn’t stayed to hear Sang-mi’s sobs. She couldn’t.

She goes back to their formerly shared apartment afterwards and gets drunk and cuts open her hand and swears vengeance on Kadabra and shakes the feeling of being watched free for just long enough to climb drunkenly to the roof and sit there, hand still dripping blood down onto to the street below. She stares out across Piradell and looks at the Steel Spire, the tip of it stabbing up into the clouds. It’s a warm night. She can still smell smoke, though logically she knows it’s not from the service. Piradell is across the country from the badlands where it took place.

The sound of a breach opening behind her doesn’t surprise her. She rests her head on her knees and hugs her legs together, ignoring how that smears her own blood on her pants. Her father sits down next to her, legs hanging off the side of the roof.

“You can see the palace from here,” he comments, and Cynthia flinches. He sighs. “I’m sorry about your partner.”

“Yeah.” Her voice sounds tinny and far away to her own ears and her tongue feels numb. “I don’t want a new one.”

Cynthia doesn’t  _ have _ to get assigned a new one, but ultimately it’ll be the council’s choice if she does. Plenty of Collectors don’t have partners. She never wondered why until now. Collectors don’t retire. They die on the job. That’s the only reason to be alone in the field, unless you’re on the council. And even then, everyone else who runs the program is kind of like your partner, even if she’s been listening to her father complain about them for almost as long as she’s been alive, especially when it comes to the particularly difficult people to work with like Waller.

“I’ll see what I can do,” he promises. She looks at him out of the corner of his eye. The lights of Piradell reflect onto his face, the pale gold of his eyes-and how come she never wondered about  _ that  _ when she was little? She inherited many things from her father, but she got her mother’s dark eyes flickered through with blood red-gleaming. “She was a good Collector.”

“He was the reason I had such a flawless record. I don’t know if I’ll be able to keep it up with her gone,” Cynthia sighs. It’s easier to focus on something like that than on the aching hole in her chest.

“There’s rumors of a rebellion near the outer parts of Piradell,” her father says suddenly. Cynthia blinks. That’s… An unexpected change of topic. “People who want to see enough blood spill to get Mordeth off the throne.”

The night suddenly feels a whole lot colder, like just  _ saying  _ Cynthia’s mother’s name will bring the queen down on their heads. Maybe it will. Something cold and dark knots inside her chest, next to the hole that Barclay left behind. Cynthia swallows down bile.

“Are you asking me if I’m involved with it?” She says softly. Her voice is barely above a whisper, but it’s as loud as she dares to go. “Because I’m not.”

“I know you aren’t.” He stands. “I just thought you would want to know. I’ve discovered that the rebels meet in the badlands outside of what’s left of Central City, if you ever wanted to get yourself on your mother’s good graces.”

Cynthia picks up on something guarded in his voice. “That’s the last thing I want,” she admits. “Why are you telling me this? How do you know where-” She closes her eyes. “Daddy, no. No.” 

She feels her father open another breach behind her. “That spider in the palace has hurt us enough, Petal. It’s time we stopped letting her use us as her pawns.”

Cynthia drops her head down onto her chest. He’s right, and she knows it. The blood on her hand has dried. There’s still smoke in her nostrils. Barclay is dead. Her father is with the rebellion. She is lost.

Cynthia was born to be a tool, and for the first time she leans completely into that duty.

Not for her mother. Never. She will never let that happen. But for her father. For the Collectors. For the council. And, late at night when she’s alone, for the rebellion.

It doesn’t take much to sway Zatanna and Mari to her side. She finds out quickly that David and Hila have been working with the rebellion for months, although not nearly as long as their teachers at the academy had thought when he was suspected for being a rebel when they were both still in training. Cynthia and Zatanna grow closer now that they’re in the rebellion together. Zatanna is kind, and they share a similar heritage, although Zatanna had a Jewish father and a Romani mother instead of getting both from her father. Their powers are very different, but it is nice to have another sister like Mari.

David’s old nemesis at the academy is also in the rebellion, and it’s amusing to watch them avoid each other at all costs. Cynthia’s surprised at the amount of under-the-radar metahumans who have managed to avoid Collector detection for this long  _ and  _ join a rebellion at the same time. She doesn’t see Nylo often, and his abilities give her the creeps since they’re so similar to her mother’s, but she and Price share a love of firearms and Vic is nice despite her… Feral tendencies. And she trusts her father with her life.

For three years, she splits her life between being a Collector and being a part of the rebellion. She doesn’t talk to her mother, even though she’s sure that the queen has her eye on her wayward daughter. The minute the queen finds out her husband and child are working with the rebels, it’ll all be over, so Cynthia’s  _ sure  _ she doesn’t know about that part of her life, but that doesn’t mean she’s not still watching her.

For three years, Cynthia sticks to her routine. Her record stays flawless. The council doesn’t know that her father is helping her get refugees offworld. Who cares about a breach made by one of their own? Cynthia has free reign to move across the multiverse, even more so than she did before, and she takes full advantage of that. She brings things to Barclay’s headstone sometimes. Not often, but-when it’s something she knows that her partner would have enjoyed.

For three years, life is okay. Not good. Not bad. Just-happening. The threat of Mordeth looms over her shoulder, the woman who brought her into the world to use and control her, but sometimes Cynthia doesn’t feel like there are eyes trained on her back. Sometimes there are brief moments where she can forget.

And then her father tells her to go to Earth-1 and kill the famous Harrison Wells.

And then she meets Cisco.

And then her life changes.

Cynthia doesn’t care at all about Wells, not even enough to execute him, but… Cisco is  _ warm.  _ There’s something about him that seriously piques her interest. He’s the first person since Barclay who doesn’t say her codename with some level of incredulity or teasing or mistrust. Mari and Zatanna don’t say it at all, David teases her with it the same way Mari teases him with  _ Black Manta,  _ and her father calls her by her name. Cisco doesn’t even know her by her real name.

He’s not like anybody else she’s ever met, although there’s a certain shine in his eyes and a set to his jaw that reminds her of someone. She can’t place who, though, not really. It’s more of a gut feeling that she knows someone who would like him. Not Barclay, who was surprisingly prickly with people from other worlds. David, maybe. But he and Cisco don’t look alike, and while Cynthia’s  _ been  _ attracted to him in the past, she certainly isn’t now.

Cisco makes her heart flutter and sing and it’s stupid, really, that she can’t get him out of her head after she leaves Earth-1 with no Wells and as much coffee as she can carry. She’ll be in trouble with the council, Waller especially, for not bringing back proof of death, but her father will make sure she doesn’t face any  _ too  _ serious consequences.

She tells Mari about Cisco on Mari’s couch. Her friend has noticed that she’s been acting different lately, disappearing more often. She knows about what happened with Grodd, the whole damn world does, apparently, because of a certain loudmouthed speedster, but not about Cisco.

Mari covers her mouth with her hand when Cynthia tells her that Cisco’s from… Out of town, as she puts it, to avoid her mother’s ears. “Oh, Cindy…”

“I know, I know.” She buries her face in her hands. “It’s illegal. I’m lucky to be alive. When the council finds out, they’re going to kill me. When my  _ mother  _ finds out, she’s going to kill me. I’m making a huge mistake. I know.”

“I can’t stop you,” Mari sighs. “You’ve been my best friend for years, I know how stubborn you are. Trust me, I know I can’t get you to back out of this. But… I need you to be careful. I know that ever since Seong died, you’ve had to make some hard calls, and I know you’ve gotten more reckless, but if anybody finds out about this… You know what will happen. I don’t want you to choose between breaking your heart or your neck.”

Cynthia nods. She  _ knows.  _ She really does. But that’s not going to stop her.

Kadabra resurfaces and it’s like Barclay’s ghost is hovering over her shoulder urging her on to take his life. She tells Cisco about Barclay and almost cries because while it’s true that she knows Barclay isn’t coming back and she loves Cisco in a different way than she loved her partner, Barclay was her best friend in the world and the one person outside of her father that she trusted with her life. He loved her and she loved him and Cynthia knows she owes it to her to bring her killer to justice. Barclay deserves that.

She watches Kadabra’s trial with a stoney expression and smiles when she hears the guilty verdict. When she hears all the reasons he’ll be executed. Cynthia goes to Barclay’s grave, where her ashes are buried, on the day of Kadabra’s execution. Before and afterward. She watches it happen with the same expression she had when she watched the trial.

Cynthia makes sure Barclay’s headstone gets to hear all the gory details. If there’s one thing Cynthia is, it’s vindictive. She gets it from her father. Pranks at the academy went wrong quickly if she was on the receiving end of them. One of the older students, who got on Cynthia’s nerves more than most, had learned that the hard way. Multiple times. She frowned. He’d disappeared halfway through his last year, hadn’t he?

That same weird feeling in her gut that she got whenever she saw someone she knew at the rebellion base is back. He had been a suspected rebel, right? At least that’s what the rumors had been  _ after  _ he disappeared. That the queen had sent her Hound to take care of him for stirring up rebellion between the students.

Cynthia shakes the thoughts of the Hound and of her mother from her head. She is here to tell Barclay that the monster who had killed her was finally gone. And she was here to tell him about Cisco.

Her father helped her get her accidental vibing under control when she was young. It kept her safe. But when it came to Cisco, Cynthia stopped being so disciplined. She keeps a close watch in him, making sure his vibrational frequency is still humming and thrumming and  _ alive  _ all the way across the multiverse on Earth-1.

So she feels his fear and rushes to his aid without thinking. Pulls him through a breach away from his suddenly very menacing-looking doctor friend, too slow to catch him before he falls down the stairs. He scares the hell out of her later, when that speedster almost kills him, the slick metal spikes curling from their body reminding her painfully of the walls of her mother’s palace. 

But neither of them die and for so long, things are  _ good. _

Cisco is everything to her in a way that-she doesn’t know how to compare it to what she had with Barclay, because Barclay was her best friend and her lover rolled into one. She and Cisco aren’t-they’re not  _ best friends,  _ not yet, but they could be. She wants to be. She wants to know everything about him, all about the movies and colors and foods he likes and the people he loves and the things he’s afraid of.

Cynthia wouldn’t trust Cisco the way she trusted Barclay, and it’s hard to reconcile that. Her father comes down hard on him, when she eventually confesses that she’s been seeing someone-someone who  _ respects  _ her and loves her as much as she loves them and has a lot more in common with her than the two of them had previously thought. Someone who lives on another Earth. Someone worth breaking the law for. Harder than he did on Barclay. Maybe it’s because he wants to know that she’s breaking the law for the right reason.

In the end, he tells her Cisco’s a good guy. A good guy who he could tell only wore that jacket to impress him. And that maybe he should spend some time on this Earth himself. When she asks him why, he says it’s because they’ve never used it to shelter refugees before. She raises an eyebrow and asks if that’s the  _ only  _ reason, and he reluctantly admits that maybe he has a few more. A few more that he insists are completely unrelated to his small crush on that one friend of Cisco’s. (One of the ones who hasn’t tried to kill him. Cynthia’s pretty sure she yelled at him once.)

Cisco laughs loudly in her ear when she tells him that, nuzzling his face closer into the crook of her neck. “I’ll put in a good word for him if he wants. Now can we stop talking about your dad when we’re-y’know-naked? It’s kind of weird.” He kisses her collarbone when she huffs out a small laugh into his hair and mumbles  _ fine, fine. _ “God, you’re beautiful.”

Cynthia pushes him a little and he obediently rolls back, head falling down onto his pillow. She keeps his hands held down by his sides and kisses her way down his stomach, careful of the scars on his chest before tilting her head and resting her cheek just above his belly button. “Your stomach is making weird noises. It’s gurgling.”

Above her, he snorts, and it makes his skin shake against hers. “Does it sound cool?”

She shrugs and doesn’t say that she never did this kind of thing with Barclay, the soft intimacy thing. They loved and cared about each other, but despite sharing an apartment they lived separate lives when not on missions. Separate beds. “I guess.” He reaches down and pets her hair a little, tracing through the dark curls. She smacks his hand back down to the sheets. “I didn’t say you could move those.”

He laughs and flops back down again and wriggles so that her cheek is lower. He cranes his neck just enough for her to be able to see him sticking his tongue out at her, which makes her laugh and roll her eyes. “Fine, fine, I’m staying still.”

Cynthia grins and lifts her head and traces her lips down lower and there’s not a lot of things better than the way that Cisco says her name when he’s  _ really  _ desperate for her to give him what he wants. Except, maybe, for the way his voice pitches when he’s talking about something he’s really interested in. Like one of those movies he loves so much, the ones whose Earth-1 versions she watched with him because he was so excited to show her.

He shows her things like comics, too, which Cynthia says they used to have on their world before the war. She’s never read them, but David has. She reads some of the ones Cisco likes for him, at first just to humor him and then because she genuinely likes them. Not all of them are good, but she likes the ones about the travelling family with parts from different worlds who are trying to keep their baby safe. Cisco tells her that he’s read every issue of that one, and he’s sure he could find a way to send some over to her on Earth-19. She almost regrets telling him that it would be extremely illegal for him to do that.

Cynthia curls up with him and tells him about other worlds, since that’s not illegal. She rests her head against his chest and whispers about other universes. The other places she’s seen and fought battles on. Cisco listens intently, eyes wide and shining. She promises to take him to some of them one day. They both know he could go to them without her, but it’s more fun together.

Earth-33, the one world where they’re not supposed to go because of how strange it is and how much it affects the other universes in the multiverse. Earth-13, the strange world of permanent twilight where magic reigns supreme. Earth-50, where her father has been but she hasn’t. Earth-8, with its ‘Retaliators’ who fight with each other as much as they fight for the light. Earth-36, with its kind residents and dead powerhouses. Earth-26, her description of which makes Cisco burst out laughing and not stop until Cynthia’s laughing with him at the sheer ridiculousness of it all.

She loves his laugh. She loves his voice. She loves his powers and how he’s quickly getting better at utilizing them, even if it’s not to her level yet. She loves the look on his face that he gets when she takes charge and holds him down. She loves his scars, all of them, the ones from childhood accidents and the ones from transitioning and the ones from workplace mishaps. And she knows that she shouldn’t, but she loves his  _ world,  _ too. His Earth which is so very vastly different from her own. Not as much as he does, and she loves it  _ through  _ him, but-somehow, she does.

She loves how he says her name now that he knows it.

God, Cynthia loves  _ all  _ of him, even if he makes her do stupid, schmoopy things.

She loves him enough that when her mother summons her to the Spire after over a decade of having no contact with her, she ignores all of her instincts telling her to run. If she runs to the rebellion or to Cisco, her mother will follow. And Cynthia can’t let that happen.

Cynthia was born to be a tool, and her mother has finally remembered that.

The throne room is huge. It seems bigger now than it ever did before, even though Cynthia was a lot smaller back then. The silver arches curving over her head as she walks down the long hallway look almost like they’re made of bone, growing in jagged stalactites that seem to vibrate. The queen sits on a throne of gold and silver, or at least something painted to look like it, one leg crossed neatly over the other. Her silver dress reflects off her bloody red eyes with no trace of the dark black-brown they’d once been left in them, the eerie lighting of the room shining off the silver band on her head.

Mordeth, Cynthia’s mother, Queen of Earth-19, Ruler of Piradell, smiles at her thinly. “Daughter. Welcome home.”

It’s all Cynthia can do not to turn around and run. She looks behind the throne, at where her mother’s Hound, Rupture, stands, scythe in hand. His eyes, the same scarlet red as her mother’s, the same color as her own powers, shine at her. It’s a softer kind of gleam than Mordeth’s have. Funny, considering that on her orders he’s murdered thousands.

“I’m not your daughter,” she hisses out. Just being back in here feels like handing control of her life back to her mother. “You have no part of my life,  _ Your Highness. _ I am my father’s daughter, not yours.  _ He  _ is the one who loves me, not  _ you.” _

“Your father… I didn’t bring you here so we could talk about my husband,” Mordeth says scornfully. Rupture shifts nervously in his place behind the throne. She smiles again, eyes glowing a little. Cynthia wonders if she can breach to safety without Mordeth being able to move fast enough to stop her. Maybe if Rupture weren’t there… “And you are more like me than you’ll ever know, dear. How are you?”

“Why do  _ you  _ care?” Cynthia spits. Rupture’s grip on his scythe tightens.

“I was hoping you would tell me about whoever it is you’ve been breaching off to see every week,” Mordeth purrs. Cynthia freezes and Mordeth  _ tsks.  _ “Did you really think I wouldn’t find out? Nothing goes on in your head without me knowing about it, my dear. You may not want to believe you’re my child, but you  _ are.”  _ Cynthia’s fingers bubble with energy and Mordeth laughs. “You know you’re not strong enough to stop me, daughter. You and your father never were.”

Something at Cynthia’s temples  _ burns  _ and she gasps in surprise, gritting her teeth to stop herself from making any more noise and giving Mordeth the satisfaction of hearing her in pain. “What do you  _ want?”  _ She manages to get out. “I-”

The same force slams Cynthia’s mouth shut, hard enough it hurts her jaw and fast enough she almost bites her tongue.

Mordeth shakes her head slowly. “Earth-1, hm?” She pushes further and Cynthia drops to her knees, straining against the pressure in her head. Her shoulders shake with the effort not to panic and not to let Mordeth win. The last time someone forced their way inside her head-“Cisco Ramon? Silly name.”

Cynthia closes her eyes as memories flicker through her head like Mordeth is trying to select one.  _ No, no, no, no, get out of my head- _

The pressure on her skull abruptly ceases, and as Cynthia’s eyes open she watches Mordeth’s face change from surprise back to smugness. “You’ve gotten stronger,” she acknowledges. “Your father must’ve taught you. Now,  _ Cynthia”- _ hearing that name instead of the one her mother used to call her makes something hot and vicious and triumphant rise up in Cynthia’s chest-“I have a proposition for you.”

“I know better than to make deals with a snake.” Cynthia wipes at the blood dripping out of her nose. Nobody else (aside from perhaps her father) would dare speak to her mother this way, she knows that much, but she’s not like anybody else. She can tell it’s making Rupture anxious.

“Is that any way to talk to your mother? To your  _ Queen?”  _ Mordeth curls her lip. “I’m disappointed in you.”

Cynthia spits out blood onto the perfectly clean floor of the throne room. “You always are.”

The pain returns, and Cynthia’s ears ring as she clutches at the sides of her head. Rupture makes a small quiet noise of upset and Cynthia hears and feels rather than sees her mother direct some of the pain Cynthia is feeling onto him instead, making him yelp. Cynthia doesn’t know whether to feel sympathy or relief.

“You will  _ listen  _ to what I have to tell you,” Mordeth said coldly. Cynthia blinks away the black spots dancing across her vision. “The time has come for you to live out your purpose.  _ I  _ do not care if you submit to being my weapon willingly, but it will be so much easier for the both of us if you do.”

“And why the  _ hell  _ would I?” Cynthia can barely get the words out over the stabbing pain in her head.

“Because if you do, I’ll spare you little lover. This… Cisco.” Mordeth taps one long sharp nail against her chin. Cynthia feels like she can’t breathe.  “And if you don’t, I’ll have my Hound here tear him apart.”

The pain and pressure on Cynthia’s head vanishes, but the feeling of struggling to breathe remains. “I won’t-”  _ Not Cisco, not Cisco, not Cisco, not Cisco, please no.  _ “I won’t let you. I’ll-I’ll kill you first, I won’t let you-”

“Always so defiant,” Mordeth sighs. “Would you prefer I kill your father now instead of publicly later?” Cynthia pales. “That’s what I thought.”

“I won’t let you hurt them. I  _ won’t.”  _ Cynthia tries to stand, legs shaking underneath her. “I’d rather die than let you hurt them.”

“Well, my dear,  _ your  _ death is not an option.” Mordeth smiles. It’s the same sickly sweet smile that Cynthia remembers from growing up. The one that means her mother is really, truly  _ pissed.  _ “Where would I be if you died, hm? Exactly. You have two options-submit or be defiant. If you submit, your ‘Cisco’ lives. If you’re defiant, he dies along with the rest of his planet. And either way, your father dies. Those are your only options, daughter. Choose wisely.”

“No. I won’t. I  _ won’t!”  _ Cynthia tries to blast at her mother, but Rupture, seemingly recovered from his small punishment, springs forward from his place behind the throne and absorbs the blast entirely with his scythe. For a moment, Cynthia stares directly into his eyes, and it’s like there’s a lump in her throat that she can’t swallow past. No wonder they say the Hound is Mordeth’s eyes and ears alongside being her weapon. It’s like looking at her mother behind that mask. Cruel and cold and empty.

Rupture advances on her slowly, crouched low to the ground and moving with feline-esque grace. Cynthia doesn’t know how she’ll be able to defeat both Rupture  _ and  _ his master, but she’s damn well going to try. She has to try. There’s nothing else she can do. No matter what option she picks, she loses Cisco, either to death or because he’ll never be able to forgive her for choosing him over his family, never be able to forgive her for saving his life at the cost of the world. And she’s sure her mother knows it. How can she not?

Mordeth waves a hand and Rupture straightens and returns to his spot at her side. The Queen clicks her tongue. “Don’t make this more difficult than it has to be, Cynthia. The longer you try to fight me, the faster your lover dies.” Her smile grows sharper. “You wouldn’t want me to order my Hound to remove his head from his shoulders, would you?”

“Don’t you  _ dare  _ hurt him.” She can’t  _ think- _ if she breaches out of there then Rupture will just track her down again and drag her back before Mordeth, if she tries to kill Mordeth now then she’ll have to fight the Hound, her mother,  _ and  _ whatever raptors Mordeth manages to summon before Cynthia rips out her spine, if she tries to just  _ run  _ she’ll never make it, there’s no way for her to get a message to her father, if she gives in to Mordeth to save Cisco then she’s responsible for millions of lost lives if not more, and Cisco will never forgive her.

_ Cisco. _

They’re connected. Not in the way Cisco seems to think they are, although maybe in that way too, but because when they first met Cynthia was… Interested. It’s embarrassing to admit, but her powers latched onto him and connected with his. She’s told Cisco about it before, like when she used the connection to know that he was in danger from Killer Frost. But outside of that, they’ve never really gone in-depth with it despite using it after that for… Other things.

Cynthia closes her eyes. Please, God, let Cisco be listening. She reaches across the worlds and finds him in a heartbeat. It’s simple, really, since she does it so often already. Usually when they use their link it’s for, well, very different reasons than life-saving ones, but hopefully-

Rupture must be able to feel it, but Mordeth and her Hound make no moves to stop her. Cynthia kneels, takes a deep breath, and shuts off the link completely after sending down all that fear and horror and dread. Now she just feels… Empty. Alone. And ready to do what she needs to do. Hopefully it won’t be too late. It  _ can’t  _ be too late. She won’t let it be too late.

“I’ll cooperate,” she says softly. “If you spare Cisco.” She doesn’t dare beg for her father’s life. All Cynthia can really do is hope he’s strong enough to get away. Strong enough to help Cisco save his world. “I promise.”

Her mother stands up, silvery dress rippling and shimmering like water. She claps her hands together softly, making her rings scrape against each other and causing her many bracelets to chime. “Perfect.” Clawed hands clamp down tightly on Cynthia’s upper arms. She’d been too preoccupied with thoughts of Cisco to notice her mother’s raptor guards coming up behind her. It didn’t matter anyway. “Show my dear daughter to her old room. Tomorrow, we take what is mine. It’s time to tell my husband that his little rebellion is  _ over.” _

Cynthia was born to be a tool, and the last thing she wants is to be one.

Her room isn’t how she remembers it. It always seemed so much bigger than it does now when she was a child. Less like a prison and more like a shelter from her mother’s rage. The servants at the castle weren’t allowed to bother her when she locked herself in her room, and the raptors never tried to come for her when she was curled under the blankets on her bed. The only one she ever allowed inside was her father, and only when he could prove he was alone, and even then sometimes it didn’t feel safe.

The posts of her bed look more like bone now, coming up almost to the ceiling and supporting a gossamer canopy. When she was little, it had looked like the starry night sky. Now it looks like a spiderweb about to drop down and keep her trapped. Cynthia’s now tall enough that she can see out the window of her old room without needing her father to pick her up, but now the window has steel bars in a grid going across it to keep her from climbing out. Not that Cynthia would dare to for the same reason she knows she can’t breach-if she does, Cisco and her father will die.

Cynthia sits down in the farthest place in the room from the door and watches it, eyes full of suspicion. She’s glad she ate earlier, because it’s unlikely Mordeth will feed her, but she almost regrets it for the way bile crawls up in her throat at the thought of being used by her mother as a weapon. It’s not like it hasn’t occupied her nightmares for years, but she always assumed that Mordeth had forgotten. Or that Cynthia would be able to get away before her mother captured her.

In the end, she hadn't even been captured. She’d walked right into Mordeth’s jaws of her own free will. Cynthia buries her face in her knees and tries to breathe. Even if he hadn’t understood her message, Cisco must’ve felt their link shut off, right? He would know what to do. He would know what to do. There was still time to stop this.

She doesn’t move all night, and in the morning when the cold light from the rising sun spills over the edge of her barred window, the raptors come to take her away.

Cynthia doesn’t fight. If she wants to, she knows she could kill the two raptor guards marching her in between them. It’s a light guard for her and she knows her mother only did it to show how powerless she really is. They all know she could kill the guards and breach to freedom in two seconds flat. But Mordeth has all the power. And they both know she won’t.

Cynthia always liked going down to the lower levels of the palace when she was a child and playing hide and seek among the machinery. Whenever her father caught her, he would bring her back upstairs and tell her not to go back down there. Cynthia never understood why. It was fun down there. Dark and warm and humming and safe from her mother. Now she knows what her father always did-Cynthia was playing under the skeleton of her own death.

The machine is huge. There are more raptors around it, but Cynthia pays more attention to her mother, standing up on a balcony high above the actual machine, than she does to them. Rupture is, as always, beside her mother, although as Cynthia watches her mother sends him away with a flick of her wrist. Mordeth is too far away for Cynthia to be able to see her face properly, but she has no doubt that her mother is smiling.

Cynthia glares up at the platform until the metal clamps around her arms and legs are joined by ones holding her head in place. Fear makes her head spin and she lowers her eyes down to the floor and tries to take deep breaths and reminds herself that even if Cisco didn’t get her message, even if he hates her forever for choosing his life over the world, this is all for him. He’ll live because of this. She can take this.

And then the machine turns on.

It hurts  _ so bad.  _ It’s harsh and shocking enough that she screams before managing to stop herself. She bites down hard on the insides of her cheeks and lips and refuses to scream again. Cynthia  _ won’t  _ give her mother that kind of satisfaction, even though she’s sure Mordeth can see the tears in her eyes and running down her cheeks. It  _ hurts,  _ so much Cynthia’s afraid she’ll scream again. The metal around her hands starts to heat up, hissing and bubbling with the energy Cynthia’s involuntarily sending into it.

She doesn’t know where it’s going. And honestly, she doesn’t really care. Cynthia can’t afford to care.

Cynthia thinks about Mari and Zatanna and David. She thinks about Barclay. She thinks about her father. She thinks about her mother. She thinks about Rupture. She thinks about Cisco. About how much she hates her world and loves his and could maybe learn to love her own if Mordeth was gone. She thinks about the machine that’s making blood and bile drip out of her mouth.

Cynthia wonders if she’s going to die. If that’s her grand purpose in her mother’s plan. To get used up by the machine until she’s nothing more than an empty husk of her former self and then to get used up even more until she does. She doesn’t want to die. She  _ really  _ doesn’t want to die. Especially not at the hands of her mother. Her body is starting to feel distant, numbness coming after each thrum of pain. Her body can’t take this, not really. The burns around her hands and ankles feel far away.

_ I won’t die. I won’t die. I won’t die. I won’t die. I swear to God I won’t die. Not today. I won’t die today. I won’t die today. _

Even with the excruciating pain ripping through her body, it’s impossible for Cynthia to miss the sound of a breach opening. She keeps her eyes closed. Rupture must be back, of course. She doesn’t know where Mordeth sent him, but-it was probably to track down Cisco. Which means Cisco is here.  _ That  _ is enough incentive for Cynthia to try to lift her head up, only to be stopped by the metal, and blink her eyes open.

She was expecting to see Cisco bloody and held in Rupture’s gauntleted hands, not six inches away from her face, eyes huge with concern.

“We’re gonna get you out of this thing, okay?” Cisco looks up at the balcony where Mordeth was-or where she  _ had  _ been, since Cynthia can’t see her up there anymore. “Breacher, you  _ need to turn this machine-” _

There’s a loud crash from the balcony and the clamps release and Cynthia half stumbles half completely falls out of the machine and then Cisco’s arms are on her shoulders asking if she can hear him, if she’s okay, where it hurts, and she throws up on him.

“Ah, shit,” the love of her life says. “Well-that’s okay, I’ll just-” He vibrates and it phases right through him onto the floor. “See? I told you I learned that trick for a reason.” The forced humor in his voice falls flat as he holds her up around the waist, gently walking her away from the machine. “We’re gonna get you out of here, alright? Your dad is… Up there somewhere, Barry and Wally are with the rest of the rebels, and-”

“We have to kill her,” Cynthia wheezes out. She spits some blood onto the floor and blinks the dizziness out of her eyes. “We  _ have  _ to kill her. My dad knows that. We-We can’t let her live. We can’t let her  _ win.” _

Something’s tickling at the back of her mind. A half formed idea from something Mordeth said. But her head is spinning too much for her to properly remember it, and she’s too afraid of throwing up again to try to focus on it.

Cisco frowns and pulls his goggles down over his eyes. “I’m sure there’s a way to beat her without  _ killing  _ her…”

“No. No. We have to kill her.” Cynthia chokes down bile. “Daddy?”

Her father lands silently beside them and Cisco jumps away and clings tighter to Cynthia before pretending he didn’t. “Yes?”

“Where’s Mordeth? And where’s the Hound?” The room has stopped spinning, and now it’s easier for her to carefully put one foot in front of the other.

“I don’t know where Rupture is,” he admits. “Your  _ boyfriend  _ said he was chasing him when he breached into the rebellion base, but he never followed. Mordeth will be back at any minute.”

Cynthia buries her face in Cisco’s shoulder for a moment, taking a few deep breaths. He smells like the shampoo he wears because he knows she likes it. “Thank you. For responding to my message.”

He squeezes her close and pointedly ignores her father’s glaring from a few feet away. “Of course. God, Cindy, I was so  _ worried- _ I thought you were  _ dead  _ when the link shut off, and then your dad showed up in my house-”

“What?” Cynthia’s voice is muffled by Cisco’s shoulder.

“Yeah! And he said you were missing, and he couldn’t vibe you for some reason? Like you’d shut yourself off completely from that… I dunno, multiversal vibration we’re all attached to?” Cisco shrugs. “Which is basically the same thing I felt after you sent me…  _ That.  _ And then this huge guy holding a  _ giant  _ scythe showed up, also in my bedroom, and tried to cut both of our faces off. Your dad just, like, left me there to deal with it”-Cynthia glares hard at her father, who shrugs and doesn’t deny it-“but after a few seconds he started… Slowing down? It was like he was pulling his punches. It gave me enough time to breach out of there, and then I followed Breacher’s vibrational trail to where he was.”

“I explained the situation and he brought his assistant”-Cynthia blinks-“and the other hero of Central City over to the rebellion base.” Her father scowls.  _ “Without  _ asking me first.”

“It was for Cindy’s safety! You can’t  _ possibly  _ be mad about that!” Cisco throws his free hand up in the air. He opens a breach next to them for them to leave through. “I mean-come on, you don’t have to like me, or Barry, or Wally, but if I hadn’t brought them through, we’d be in a lot of trouble if-Rupture? The Hound? Whatever his name is-decided to attack us!”

Which, of course, is when a bright red blast slams into his chest and tosses him backward. Cynthia stumbles but doesn’t fall, swiveling on her heel and weakly gathering energy in her hands. The Hound stares her down, cold mask betraying no emotion as he points the scythe at her chest.

“Princess Cynthia, you are ordered to get back inside the machine,” he hisses, and Cynthia starts. She’s never actually heard him talk before outside of his screams of pain. It’s distorted and twisted and vibrated but behind the mask and the cape and the armor and the blades he sounds… Young? Frightened? She can’t tell why, but it makes something inside her gut twist.

Cisco scrambles to his feet at the same time her father reacts, charging at the Hound and going right for his throat. Cisco joins in, and Cynthia focuses on keeping the contents of her stomach inside her body. Cisco doesn’t fight like she and her father do. He’s not trying to kill Rupture, just subdue and contain him. Her father, on the other hand, is matching all of Rupture’s devastating blows in a way that Cisco simply refuses to.

Cynthia stiffens as something distantly makes a clicking sound. Her mother is back. Her father and Cisco are busy with the Hound. While she  _ could  _ breach to safety and take shelter with the rebellion, that wouldn’t do anything good in the long run. And she’s not sure if she’s strong enough to maintain a breach.

She knows what she has to do, she knows this palace like the back of her hand, and she knows exactly where her mother is.

Cynthia takes a deep breath and starts hunting.

Cynthia was born to be a tool for her mother, which means her mother put some of herself inside her.

Mordeth sits on her throne, unguarded. She looks… Wrong, like a twisted reflection of her former self. The red glow from her eyes makes her face look even more skeletal than usual, her skin is the pale sickly translucent white of an eyeless cave creature, and her fingers look like boney claws with hooked talons at the ends. She smiles as she sees Cynthia approaching, and the twisted grin is full of teeth. “Daughter.”

“Mother,” Cynthia greets, inclining her head. She takes a deep breath and tries to focus. Tries to breathe. She can do this, she knows she can. “You look… Well.”

“I’m glad to hear that you’re  _ finally  _ recognizing how much I mean to you. And it’s that stupid pet of mine,” the queen says scornfully, shaking her head.

Cynthia remembers what Cisco told her about the Hound pulling his blows. “...Rupture’s fighting back.”

Mordeth waves a hand. “It doesn’t matter. Once he kills my husband and your lover-oh, yes, my dear, you lost the privilege to have him alive when you stepped out of my machine-I’ll give him a few more lessons in discipline and he’ll be fine.  _ You,  _ on the other hand… You need an even firmer hand.”

“I’m going to kill you,” Cynthia says softly. It’s almost gentle. She remembers what Mordeth said now, while they were standing in the throne room together, and she knows exactly what it is that she’s going to do. “I’m going to rip your miserable head from your shoulders for everything you’ve done to this world and everything you  _ want  _ to do to other worlds.”

“You can’t kill me,” Mordeth dismisses. “You said it yourself-you are your father’s daughter.” She smiles again. “And your father, above anything else, is a coward. Just like you are.”

Cynthia plants her feet on the floor. “I’m my father’s daughter,” she says, “but I’m also yours. I know that now. You tried to tell me before, but I didn’t listen.” The energy dancing at her fingertips vanishes. “I’m listening now. I’m just like you, aren’t I? I’m just like you.”

Her eyes glow pure bright red and she viciously rips her way into Mordeth’s mind.

For a moment it’s like being in freefall, all the breath sucked out of her chest, and then something slams into her, Mordeth fighting back so strongly it’s like trying to stand against a hurricane. Her worst fears crowd around her and she stumbles sideways until she hits a wall, using it to keep herself standing as she tries to breathe.

Mordeth’s eyes shine even brighter. “Do you think you can stand up to  _ me, _ little girl? I needed you alive, not in one piece.” She shoves harder and Cynthia stumbles, more blood coming out of her mouth. “You’re  _ nothing  _ like me. I was wrong. You’re just a weak little girl who doesn’t know what’s good for her and is disloyal to her queen.”

“I’m the best damn motherfucking Collector on this world,” Cynthia snarls, pushing back with everything she’s got. “Even better than my father. I’m stronger than you and I’ve been through more than you ever will. I don’t hurt people for personal gain. I’m smarter than you and stronger than you and  _ better  _ than you. And you know what?” She opens her eyes, twin pinpricks of gold within the scarlet fixing on her mother and on the figure creeping up behind her. “You took  _ nothing  _ from me. And you  _ never  _ will.”

Cynthia’s not sure which one of them screams louder. Not sure if the bones she can hear breaking are hers or Mordeth’s. Not sure if the heavy, ragged breathing she can hear is hers or not. The heartbeat pounding in her ears is definitely her own, though, and that gives her comfort.

She pushes herself up on her hands, trying to move through the pain that threatens to overwhelm her. She looks at her mother lying on the floor, circuits and wires sparking in the blood spilling from the stump of her neck. Cynthia doesn’t look at the head lying a few feet away, but she does look at where Rupture is standing, mask gone and bloody scythe blade resting against the floor.

“Hey,” she whispers, since that seems to be the only volume her voice is currently capable of, “thanks.”

Rupture looks at Mordeth’s corpse, looks at Cynthia, and then opens his mouth to speak. 

Cynthia passes out on the floor before she can hear whatever he’s about to say.

When she wakes up, it’s to the sound of Cisco and her father arguing.

“Shut up, both of you,” she says, before either of them realize that she’s awake. She tries to roll over a little bit, touching at the soft whatever-it-is around her. This doesn’t feel like the floor of the palace, or at least not the same part of it she passed out on earlier. While Cisco and her father stare at her, she touches the pillow under her head. “Hm.”

“You’re up!” Cisco shouts, delighted, before lowering his voice when Cynthia groans and pushes her face more into the pillow. “We thought we had-well, you weren’t really, like,  _ breathing  _ when we found you, and Caitlin said your whole body was kinda broken, so we were worried you weren’t gonna make it, but-”

“Where am I?” Cynthia interrupts. “And-God-” She reaches up to touch her head when it spikes with pain and notices the bandages around her arms and the IV in the back of her hand. “How long have I been…?”

“Twenty years,” Cisco says immediately. “We all have to live on the moon now since Earth is completely uninhabitable and overrun by giant, sentient, man-eating plants.”

Cynthia’s brain is too fuzzy to pick up on that, so she just nods. “Okay.”

Cisco’s face falls and that’s when Cynthia sees his hand and all the air goes out of her lungs. “Damn. You got me. It’s been, like… A week? You woke up a few times, said some kind of incoherent stuff, and then went back to sleep. And like I said, it was kinda touch and go for awhile. This is the first time you’ve actually  _ moved.” _ Cynthia looks at the sling her father’s arm is in and then back at Cisco’s hand. Cisco follows her gaze. “Oh, yeah.” His voice goes quiet. “After Armando ran off, we had a run in with some raptors, and I was still tired from the fighting and all…”

“I’m sorry,” she says.

“It’s-yeah. Thanks. It’ll be fine soon, I guess. I’ve been on the phone with Nate-I don’t think you’ve ever meet him-and talking with him about-getting used to prosthetics and all, you know-once it heals fully…” He trails off again and looks at Cynthia’s father like he’s waiting for him to say something. Cynthia can tell he's brushing it off so she won't be concerned and leaves it, for now.

“You killed her, Petal.” He grins at her, and Cynthia can’t help but smile a little bit back. “You made her pay.”

A hysterical little laugh rises up in her throat and comes out before she can stop herself. “I  _ did,  _ didn’t I?” She starts crying. “I  _ killed her.” _

It hurts too much to curl up in a little ball and cry, so her father pulls her into a tight hug and smoothes her hair down like he used to when they were hiding from her angry mother and she pretends it’s the same. “You did it. You killed her. She’s not gonna be able to hurt anyone else, or colonize any more worlds. She’s gone. You saved us, Petal.”

“Not just me,” she mumbles into his chest. “Rupture-he-”

Cisco hugs her from behind, ignoring her father’s startled noise. “Yeah, about that… I understand if you don’t wanna see him, I really do. Your dad doesn't. And I get it, he hurt a lot of people on your world, and murdered even more. But… As it turns out…”

And that’s how Cynthia finds out that her boyfriend’s older brother is the Hound of Mordeth, the one who helped her murder his mistress. It’s not the strangest thing to ever happen to her.

A few days later, when she’s up and walking around and secretly trying to train before Caitlin can catch her and scold her, her father asks if she still has her mother’s powers.

Cynthia feels the anxiety swirling under his skin and shudders and nods and then startles when he pulls her into a hug. He’s been weird about that lately. Hugging  _ more.  _ She must’ve really scared him-he shows her physical affection, he always has, but it’s… Different. Weirder.

To change the subject, she asks what happened while she was out of it. Cisco and her father and Barry and Wally tell her that right before Mordeth died she sent her raptors to the rebellion base to kill everyone inside. Cisco was pretty much out of it from blood loss, so he was forced to go back to Earth-1 by pretty much everyone. Barry was seriously injured but already healed, Wally broke his ankle but escaped mostly unscathed, and her father killed more raptors than could lay a hand on him. Cisco, Wally, and Barry describe it as an easy victory, but later her father pulls her aside and tells her that there  _ were  _ losses.

Nylo is dead, Vic is dead, Price is missing in action, Hila is dead, Ralph is dead, Tora is missing in action, all three of their speedsters are dead, Kyle is missing in action but they found his hand a few feet from the compound so they’re not hopeful, J’onn is missing in action, Billy is dead, Ray is missing in action, Hartley is missing in action, Bea went looking for Tora and hasn’t come back… And that’s not even counting the injuries. 

Mari is alive, but Zatanna is still in a dangerous condition back home. Ryan lost an eye. Mina lost three fingers and has an infected bite on her shoulder and no J’onn to stop the raptor virus from reaching her brain. Hank hasn’t come out of his room and won’t let anybody see the damage, too afraid of the reaction he’ll get because of his powers. Helena lost a leg. And there’s more that her father and Cisco don’t know about.

She sits on the roof of Cisco’s apartment building a little over a month later and remembers when she swore vengeance for Barclay’s death and remembers hiding from her mother and remembers the incident that sparked her powers to life and remembers when her mother’s Hound first crashed down to Earth and how Cynthia had knelt down beside him after he was hurt particularly badly by Mordeth and would pet his hair but otherwise hadn’t done anything to help him. 

Thinks about how Rupture-no,  _ Armando Ramon,  _ a person, not a tool like they were both supposed to be-lives in the Pipeline now. In a cell. How she can’t bear to be around him after the hurt he has caused her and her family and the people of her world even though she  _ knows  _ it’s not his fault and that he never, ever wanted any of it. Both of them tools for Mordeth to use.

Cisco sits down beside her, abandoning his prosthetic blueprints inside on the kitchen table. “Hey. What’re you thinking about?”

“I don’t know,” she admits. “A lot of things, I guess.” Something in her chest breaks down and she realizes that she actually  _ likes  _ talking about her feelings when it’s to Cisco. Hm. She’s not sure if she likes that. “Mostly about my mother. And your brother. And how much repairing my world is going to need.”

Cisco wraps his arm around her. Not the one missing its hand. They don’t talk about it. Neither of them really know why. She rests her head on his shoulder and he awkwardly wriggles and then cranes his neck so he can kiss the side of her head. Cynthia closes her eyes and hears his heartbeat. Her father’s powers are  _ far  _ more comforting to her than the ones currently allowing her to hear Cisco’s million-miles-a-minute thoughts. Cynthia hates it and tries to stop focusing on it and to focus on the vibrations under Cisco’s skin instead. She hates the idea that nobody will have any privacy when she’s around if she doesn’t get these powers under control. That she could use this ability to hurt people like her mother did. It makes her skin crawl.

“I’ll come to Earth-19 and help rebuild, if you want,” Cisco offers. “I’m not sure how your dad will feel about it, but I think I could be pretty useful.”

“...You’d do that?” She blinks.

Cisco gives her a squeeze. “I mean, why not? Besides, Armando’s the one who did a lot of the damage there, and I feel guilty I wasn’t there to help during the final raptor attack… I wanna do something to help.”

“You feel guilty for not being there… Because you were bleeding out,” Cynthia says dryly.

“Hey, you feel guilty for not being there, too!” Cisco points out. “Even though you were unconscious and probably legally dead or something for a few seconds!” His voice gets higher and then cracks. He looks away. “...It was hard. I thought you were dead when we found you.”

“I won’t die,” Cynthia promises. “Not while you’re still around.” The corner of her mouth twitches. “Who would save you then?”

“Neither of us can die while the other one is still alive,” Cisco says seriously. “Who else will save us if we’re not around to save each other from various terrible fates?”

“My dad,” Cynthia says immediately. “Barry-wait a second. My Dad... Wait.” She frowns as something occurs to her. “...Hey, why did...Cisco. This is serious.”

“Yeah?” He lets Cynthia grip his hand and furrows his eyebrows. “...Are you okay?”

“You remember being with me at the base of Mordeth’s machine, right?” Cynthia says slowly. “And how Dad said he knew I was in trouble because he felt that I cut myself off from that multiversal energy we’re all attached to?” Cisco nods. “Yeah. That means he pays attention to it often. So. You know those really, really strong feelings of disapproval and vague disgust and, like, abject hatred that just come out of  _ nowhere  _ sometimes right before we’re about to use that connection to start-”

“Oh,” Cisco squeaks. He clears his throat. “Oh, that’s-that’s-oh. Oh, Jesus. Fuck. Okay!” Cynthia starts laughing and he gestures at her. “Hey! Stop laughing! This is an objectively really, really terrible thing! God, do you think he-”

“No way. I’m not the only one who can block signals from it and cut myself off from it, we can all do that.” Cynthia shakes her head, still laughing. “Ouch-fuck-that really hurts.” She winces and touches her ribs. They’re not really healed fully. Every time she thinks they are, the pain comes back. Maybe it’s a psychological thing. “Ow.” She slowly stops laughing, rubbing her ribs the whole time. “Cisco?”

“Hm? You’re not gonna tell me something really awful that flips my worldview upside down, are you?” Cisco looks at her, and for a second she just looks back at him, face light strangely from the lights of Central City but still so warm.

“I love you.” Despite the way it makes her ribs burn, she pulls her knees up to her chest. “A whole fucking lot.”

He cuddles up closer to her again on the roof. “I love you a whole fucking lot too.”

She sighs and squeezes his hand. “...I don’t know if I want to go back to Earth-19.” It feels weird to say out loud. “Ever.”

“Okay.” He hums a little. “You don’t have to if you don’t want to. I’m not sure how your dad will take it, but…”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah.”

Cynthia breathes in the air of Earth-1 and realizes it tastes different than the air on every other Earth, and that the air always tastes different and  _ how  _ did she not notice that before-she breathes again and closes her eyes.

Mordeth is dead. They’re free.

It’s nice not to be a tool anymore.

**Author's Note:**

> Nobody in the comic book industry actually knows Mystek's gender or real name, Cindy and Cisco are both trans, and I do what I want.


End file.
